What is the current policy of making an edit?

Question

I have read in the help that an edit should be to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it.
But my question is :

• Is this the ultimate policy for the time being.

There are some policies which are decided on meta and aren't mentioned abstractly on help page e.g. the homework policy. If there are more details on the editing policy mentioned somewhere on meta please provide that link.

• More specifically can we change any question which is merely a resource recommendation to a conceptual question?

• Last but not the least if editing policy is mentioned somewhere please give me a link of that. If not then please mention it as an answer to my question..

Answer 1

Edits are meant to transform posts into better posts, but only as long as doing so does not misrepresent the intent of the person the post is credited to. In most cases, that does mean clarifying but not changing the post's meaning. Changing a resource recommendation into a conceptual question is usually an example of that: the person really wants to know about the concept, but decides to ask for resources for some reason (perhaps because they think it will make them look less lazy), and so an editor is able to make the question better by changing it to ask what the person directly wants to know.

Sometimes an edit can be a little more drastic. This is for when a post is inappropriate in its current form and would otherwise be closed, but it's fairly clear how to edit it in a way that makes it appropriate. Usually the editor in such a situation is experienced and knowledgeable, and the original poster is new to the site, and so may not know how to make a good edit themselves.

In general, any official policies on meta are tagged faq, so between the help center and those questions, you can get all the information you should need about policies.